Shananagins Lately: Memorial Day Weekend Edition

It’s Friday but I still have a Memorial Day Weekend hangover and it’s not alcohol induced! It’s not every week that you are given a 3-day weekend so I took advantage of it. My Memorial Day Weekend was a memorable one. Usually when I get time off of work I make the trip down to see my family.

Saturday I dropped Gus off at boarding early Saturday morning and packed up my Civic with all of our stuff for our weekend home. Once Judd got home from work, we hit the road hometown bound! It’s about a two-hour drive to get to my parents place and once we got there we were greeted with my brother who was home and golden retriever, Connor. We had a quick dinner then went to visit my grandparents. It is always an adventure going to visit family but my grandparents have the best stories! My grandfather was in the air force so they traveled and lived in a lot of interesting places. We sat around drinking our coffee and tea and listened to my grandmother talk about the time she had to fly with 4 kids from Australia to the states.

Family GoPro Portrait with Connor, my parent’s golden.

Sunday- Brunch is necessary whenever my brother visits or whenever I visit him. We persuaded my parents to go out to brunch before we hit the road to Tampa. We went to Bonefish and had an amazing brunch filled with Eggs Benedict and Peach Bellinis. We had great conversation and many laughs like always. By the time we got back home it was time for us to get on the road to Ybor City/Tampa. We had a big evening planned and wanted to get in town with time to spare just in case there was traffic. Everyone must have been at the beach because our drive out was a quick one! We arrived at our hotel in Ybor City and noticed that most of the guests were Rush fans. Everyone had their concert shirts on and we all waved, hollered and cheered with each other. The show was going to be epic! We met up with one of my mom’s co-workers and grabbed dinner before getting our Rush gear on for the concert. I dusted off my Rush vest I made for the last tour and put on my new bright red Chuck Taylor’s. It was going to be a special occasion so I also put on my bright red Taylor Swift inspired lipstick and was ready to rock out. We shuttled over to the arena where the sold out attendance to the show was awaiting the doors to open. Once we got in we found our seats and settled in until show time. If you know my father or my husband you know how important this concert was to us. Rush is one of the longest touring bands in history and this was their 40th anniversary tour and possibly last major tour. Knowing that this could be the last time we saw them, we prepared ourselves for what would be the best concert we have ever been to. I grew up listening to Rush. I had songs I would listen to on repeat and still do to this day. They played the song I walked down the aisle to live. (I got emotional just hearing it.) They played a song that I have always wanted to hear live. They finished the show on stage with minimal equipment and the crowd went wild. I didn’t want it to end and I was sad when it did.

Monday- Still suffering from a ‘Rush” hangover, I woke up and had breakfast with my family before we headed back to their place. We got home and instantly went through our video and pictures of the show. My dad put on an old Rush concert DVD from the 30th anniversary tour and we sat back and enjoyed it. We had to drive back to Jacksonville that afternoon so I could go to work in the morning. As we drove home, I couldn’t help but smile at the amazing weekend and amazing memories we had made!